Proof Reading For Stone Crabs

Posted on Jan 30 in Marketing Offline, Marketing Online, Marketing Strategiesby MichelePrint

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When You Miss Just One… The Project Can Sour Fast

Proofing For A Living – With No Guarantees

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My experience includes many marketing projects that mattered greatly in every detail. Even when all the details are right, what matters most in the end is the quality of the proofing job. If you’re in business, especially for yourself and are the jack of all trades, you must become a good proof reader. Again, like so many other important things in life, good proof reading skills are achieved with lots of practice.

You may be wondering what stone crabs have to do with marketing strategies or with proofing. Stone crabs in my world, are the typos and errors you find… after you think you’ve found them all… More about stone crabs in a minute.

The point I would like to make right now is this: while you may think you’ve done a great job of proofing the first time, it’s time to proof again. For your most important jobs, it’s time to ask someone else to look at your work. Don’t cut corners here.

Why you ask? Because sometimes there are no do overs and a mistake will haunt you and the impact of the project you worked so hard to complete, for what seems like all eternity. This is especially true with commercially printed projects of any kind. My favorite, was a grammatical error I spotted on a billboard!

Let it come off the press with an error, and no matter how terrific your piece really is… the mistake is there forever. It costs money to reprint and marketers today, like most of us, don’t have the budget for reprinting.

Sure, on the Internet a little thing here and there is ‘considered OK’ by many… Geez, it’s electronic… and we’re never quite sure what’s going to happen with the use of multiple browsers and such. We look more human which counts online, when an email or letter contains an honest mistake. But otherwise, earn your stone crabs every chance you get.

On Miami Beach there’s an old, famous restaurant at the southern tip that serves the best stone crabs around, just about anywhere. There was a time when I worked with a marketing department in Miami and we did a lot of ‘proofing for a living’. There were a few memorable instances when just like that, we wanted to run and hide right after a print project was delivered. Someone would discover something… and it wasn’t pretty.

That’s where the stone crabs got thrown into the mix. We created a marketing strategy for ourselves. Whenever one of us found that one… last… revision… that mattered greatly to the success of a project during proofing, we would earn one very nice, succulent stone crab. Every year, a couple times a year, we’d go out for a long lunch and reward ourselves with the finest meal we could get.

Yep, it was a stone crab meal to remember, and a whole bunch of other delectable treats we just loved. In this way, we improved our proofing skills. I encourage you, and your team if you have one, to stop allowing your stone crabs to get away. With proofing, there really is no 100% guarantee because it’s always subject to human error and oversight. Practice seeing each word, reading words backward, and doing whatever it takes. Because it matters.

Your business is important. You are doing what it takes. It takes a good image of yourself and your business to support your success. Make fewer mistakes, focus on proofing, improve the messages you send, and enjoy a great lunch of your choice as reward, a couple times a year. As marketing strategies go, this one you can do. So, do it and shine.

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Here’s an apple for the teacher or the student who learns!

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